Trust accumulates as a kind of capital which opens up more opportunities for more extensive action but which must be continually used and tended and which commits the user to a trustworthy self-presentation, from which he can only escape with great difficulty. One can win trust by means of deceitful self-presentation, but one can only maintain it and use it as continually available capital if one continues the deception. Illusion then turns unnoticed into reality, the qualities which were at first deceitful grow into habits, the advantages of trust serve as an instrument of obligation. Trust educates.

XREF: Echoes the idea of endogenous preferences formation — that performative behavior gradually reconstructs genuine disposition. Connects to sociological accounts of role-taking and habit formation. SEED: A contrarian angle on the ethics of deception: sustained deception may produce genuine virtue, making the dishonest agent 'educate' themselves into integrity. Potential essay on virtue by pretense.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 246